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Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

politico.eu

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Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#171

Post by eloisant »

thamer wrote: post #14

It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company. Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to…

There was Cloudwatt also, that was supposed to be the "French AWS", and as you said got hundreds of millions from the government, was created with the help of big, old companies (Orange, Thales, Bull) and was an utter failure.

I hope they learned their mistakes and won't do them again but I fear they'll just do it the same way.

What the French government doesn't understand is that you don't create a tech giant the same way you create the TGV, the Ariane rocket or Airbus. That model worked for those giant industrial projects, but it doesn't work for tech.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#172

Post by enriquto »

Nextgrid wrote: post #119
enriquto wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A junior developer cannot at all afford renting an appartment in Paris with his basis salary. For other jobs outside of software, it is even worse.

> For other jobs outside of software, it is even worse. My understanding is that it’s the opposite. Software is significantly underpaid but you can do quite well with a typical paper-pushing bullshit job.

An entry-level tenured professor or a nurse at a hospital earn less than 2000 EUR per month. This gives them barely enough to rent a small room in a shared apartment.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#173

Post by 9q9 »

Udik wrote: post #43
thamer wrote: post #14

It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company. Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to…

I agree completely: as a European, I find these projects pathetic. We need the humility to learn something from the US and create an environment and a framework in which private companies can thrive, instead of being constantly dragged down by bureaucracy, regulations, and a legal-judiciary system eager not to help but to assert its power.

In terms of innovation in semiconductors, should also learn from the success of China, South Korea, Taiwan!

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#174

Post by zetalemur »

heipei wrote: post #155
piokoch wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very true. Another thing is that it is not like EU is somehow very far behind the US in terms of services hosting or "the cloud". There is French OVH provider and there is German Hetzner. While the former has an opinion of being cheap but no so great (especially in terms of support), the Hetzner really shines. Hetzner does not have all the AWS like "cloud" bells and whistles, however their VPS-es and especiall…

As much as I'd love for Hetzner to step up and start offering more managed services a la AWS, I just don't see it happening, and if it were I'm not sure I'd like the side-effects of that. Hetzner is laser-focused on delivering beefy and very affordable dedicated servers, apparently the way they are able to trim costs is by running most support functions on auto-pilot and having a very narrow set of products (servers,…

That's true, but there is also cloud.hetzner.com. It is rather newish and lacking most features the big 3 offer, but it might be getting there.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#175

Post by 9q9 »

cageface wrote: post #120

American internet companies can address a large, relatively homogeneous market of 300 million people that all speak the same language. This alone is a big competitive advantage over any European company.

That is true for customer-facing softwre, but would not be relevant in e.g. semiconductors, compilers, formal verification.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#176

Post by woodpanel »

enriquto wrote: post #70
thamer wrote: post #14

It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company. Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to…

While it is easy to laugh at these modern "maginot lines" that the french love to build, the concept of "technological sovereignity" seems very reasonable.

When many goverment bodies more or less have to use foreign software-infrastructure, then "maginot lines" sound reasonable.

Very reasonable indeed IMO if e.g. German police has to use AWS because of lack of alternatives, or the countless local authorities running on windows.

On the other hand, it is not the US to blame for their tech-supremacy. It is Germany and France to blame.

There might be many reasons to cite why we lack behind. But the whole spirit behind a government-google, a government-aws, government-yaddayadda comes across as being more part of the problem than part of the solution.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#177

Post by f1refly »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #125
piokoch wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very true. Another thing is that it is not like EU is somehow very far behind the US in terms of services hosting or "the cloud". There is French OVH provider and there is German Hetzner. While the former has an opinion of being cheap but no so great (especially in terms of support), the Hetzner really shines. Hetzner does not have all the AWS like "cloud" bells and whistles, however their VPS-es and especiall…

This is basically the same line of reasoning used by people that say you could replace your corporate slack with IRC. Of course you could, but there's a good reason that people don't. If you just want to compare one VPS to another, the only thing you're comparing is cost and availability. But really there's many more factors that people are interested in considering beyond just that. Even if the only service you're i…

I have a vps at hetzner. I use it as irc bouncer and as a git remote for pass. Sell me on why I should use amazon instead.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#178

Post by mattlutze »

heipei wrote: post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

But we are super proud of coining Industrie 4.0, so, that's something.

It would be wonderful to see more free and open innovation and investment in a couple of bleeding-edge tech centers in Germany. A lot of the big internationals are in Munich and Berlin is slowly growing steam for startups, but it's a disappointment to me that there's so many Germans with so much wealth prime for investment and creating a culture of exploration, but instead it sits in real estate or something.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#179

Post by 9q9 »

realusername wrote: post #126
thiht wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works, not everyone wants to move country just for a (way) better salary.

There's definitely an IT brain drain in France due to low salaries, very few people of my former school actually work for a french company anymore, they almost all went somewhere else to get a better pay. In the post-covid world of increased remote working, the brain drain will likely increase tenfold since developers won't even have to leave the country anymore.

I work with a lot of French IT people, they are all from the Grande écoles, and amazing on average. None of them work in France. What a loss!

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#180

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

namdnay wrote: post #140
pinkfoot wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn to pay your programmers properly.

Meh that's honestly not the number one problem in france. I'd even say it's a competitive advantage. Not everyone is willing to expatriate for salary, you can get really great engineers for half or even a third of what they'd be paid in SV

But then why hasn't France been invaded by US companies to hire these great engineers for half of SV money?

I know they have some small offices on campus at top universities where they employ a hand full of PhDs for ML/AI research but that's a drop in the ocean.

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